Elsie's children eBook

“Well, it’s persecution to bring up those
old stories against her now.”

“Is it? when she will not disavow them, but
maintains that she has always done right? and more
than that, tells us she will do the same again if
ever she has the power.”

“I’m sure all Romanists are not so cruel
as to wish to torture or kill their Protestant neighbors,”
cried Isadore indignantly.

“And I quite agree with you there,” he
said; “I have not the least doubt that many
of them are very kind-hearted; but I was speaking,
not of individuals, but of the Romish Church as such.
She is essentially a persecuting power.”

“Well, being the only true church, she has the
right to compel conformity to her creed.”

“Ah, you have already imbibed something of her
spirit. But we contend that she is not the true
church. ’To the law and to the testimony;
if they speak not according to this word, it is because
there is no light in them.’ Brought to
the touch-stone of God’s revealed word, she is
proved to be reprobate silver; her creed spurious
Christianity. In second Thessalonians, second
chapter, we have a very clear description of her as
that ’Wicked whom the Lord shall consume with
the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the
brightness of his coming.’ Also, in the
seventeenth of Revelation, where she is spoken of
as ’Babylon the great, the mother of harlots
and abominations of the earth.’”

“How do you know she is meant there?”
asked Isadore, growing red and angry.

“Because she, and she alone, answers to the
description. It is computed that fifty millions
of Protestants have been slain in her persecutions;
may it not then be truly said of her that she is drunken
with the blood of the saints?”

“I think what you have been saying shows that
the priests are right in teaching that the Bible is
a dangerous book in the hands of the ignorant, and
should therefore be withheld from the laity,”
retorted Isadore hotly.

“But,” returned Mr. Daly, “Jesus
said, ’Search the Scriptures; for in them ye
think ye have eternal life; and they are they which
testify of me.’”

CHAPTER NINETEENTH.

“Let us go back again
mother,
Oh, take me home to
die.”

“And so, Isa, my uncle’s predictions that
your popish teachers would violate their promise not
to meddle with your faith, have proved only too true,”
said Calhoun Conly, stepping forward, as Mr. Daly finished
his last quotation from the Scriptures.

In the heat of their discussion, neither the minister
nor Isadore had noticed his entrance, but he had been
standing there, an interested listener, long enough
to learn the sad fact of his sister’s perversion.

“They only did their duty, and I shall not have
them blamed for it,” she said, haughtily.

“They richly deserve blame, and you cannot prevent
it from being given them,” he answered firmly,
and with flashing eyes. “I have come, by
my mother’s request, to take you and Virginia
home, inviting Miss Reed to accompany us.”